MLB.com's Carrie Muskat has been covering Major League Baseball since 1981 and is the author of "Banks to Sandberg to Grace: Five Decades of Love and Frustration with the Cubs." You can follow her on Twitter @CarrieMuskat. Here, she blogs about the Cubs.

6/5 Marmol’s best pitch

Carlos Marmol’s best pitch is his slider but Cubs catcher Koyie Hill called for a fastball on a 2-2 pitch to Ryan Theriot. Marmol shook him off, and Hill went to the mound. The catcher’s objective is to make sure the pitcher believes in his pitch. Marmol did, and threw a slider. But it cost the Cubs, as Theriot hit a RBI double in the ninth to tie the game at 2. Albert Pujols hit a walkoff homer for the second straight game to complete the Cardinals’ sweep over the Cubs.

“You’ve got your big guy on the mound to close games and he’s really good at it,” Hill said of Marmol. “If he wants to throw something he believes he wants to throw, I’m all for it. The oldest thing in the book is to sit back and say ‘You should’ve done this, you should’ve done that.'”

“‘Z’ critiquing Marmol’s approach? I could care less,” Cubs manager Mike Quade said when told of Zambrano’s comments. “Everybody’s always [ticked] when he gets beat with a fastball. I’m just [ticked] when we get beat.”

And Marmol’s take?

“I made a mistake,” Marmol said. “I threw it down the middle and that’s what [Theriot] was looking for. I missed. I missed with my best pitch and he got a hit. What can you say? I decided to go with my best pitch and it didn’t work out.”

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